You would have to look long and hard to find a Shinigami in the Gotei that had managed to get a good night's sleep. For most, it was the alarms in the middle of the night and the walls coming down that broke their sound sleep. For many others, it was the sudden state of emergency that was called as the Gotei moved into an open state of war.
For some few, the reasons were more personal.
The Captain of the Tenth Division certainly fell into that last one. Genpaku Arishima certainly had not found his way to sleep, nor was he likely to any time soon despite the weariness that had crept up on him. There were no shortage of beds around him, considering he had hardly left the Fourth Division headquarters since returning from Hueco Mundo. He'd left only a few times, for a quarter of an hour at most as he went back to his office and collected the reports he'd requested and pulled up. He'd brought that stack of paperwork back with him; it was the best distraction he was likely to get at this point. The reason he needed a distraction lay, mostly quiet in a recovery bed. A friend once again injured, having been pulled from a certifiable nightmare. And of course he felt partly responsible for it.
From a certain point of view, it was understandable.
Prior to her abduction, Genpaku had been circling the idea that Kaminari was more deeply connected to the events that had been steadily taking place within the Seireitei. Too many threads had been hanging with the only commonality between them being the fact that they'd all started happening concurrently; all at the same time as Kaminari was brought back from Hueco Mundo. He'd gone against his instincts, vague though they were, and not called it out since he hadn't wanted to put his friend through something potentially greatly stressing when he had only a hunch to work on. Normally he was good about listening when his instincts told him something, but in this case he'd let his emotions dictate his actions. He'd been doing that a lot lately, with admittedly mixed results.
Even now though, he wasn't sure that calling attention to his hunch would have changed the course of things. By the time he'd truly keyed into the events taking place around the Seiretei they had progressed greatly. If anything, it may have made the situation worse. He was cognizant of that, but it didn't change the fact that someone he cared about was now laying unconscious on the bed next to him.
So he sat, and worked on the small mountain of paperwork he'd moved into the small private room. Most of what he was dealing with were old reports from patrols. They held potential new information however; things had been strange in the world of the living for a while now, and that was information Genpaku had been aware of. He'd been tracking a change in tactics in the Hollows preying on the World of the Living, and an increase in aggression towards Shinigami. They'd lost more than a few in the last year. It was this information that had first tipped Genpaku off to something strange going on behind the scenes, and it was part of why he'd been focusing his Division's practices on teamwork beyond even what he normally did. Now he was looking for patterns, and figuring out what he could do help his Division deal with the oncoming war that his Division was going to be on the front lines of.
As the first night after war was officially declared settled over the Seireitei there was finally a change in the sleeping form of the small Shinigami. The machine she was hooked up to began to beep faster, then she suddenly sat up. It wasn't surprising that she'd be having bad dreams after the night she'd just had. She suddenly turned on him, rage and an aggression that was very much at odds with the attitude she put out normally plain on her face and in his body. He simply looked back at her a moment, pencil held over a page for a crystalline second before he turned back to his work. All of that aggression faded almost instantly. She looked back at the covers, and for a few more moments the room was quiet.
"How many times is that now? Four or five? I can't remember." she muttered, her voice hoarse and throat dry. She cleared her throat before speaking again, turning back to look him in the eyes. "Why do you keep rescuing me? If you haven't noticed, I've only caused you trouble. If you ever get hurt because of me... I-... I don't know. Just stop it." He didn't bother answering her first question; instead, he reached over and picked up a glass, handing it over to her.
“Drink,” he said; his tone was gentle and kind, but it wasn't really a request. It was a friend telling another to do something for their own good. He waited for her to finish drinking some before he answered her third question.
“I would think the answer is rather clear by now. Kaminari, you are someone precious to me. I'm not like you; I don't make good friends that easily. So I couldn't stand losing someone close to me.” He said it without looking away, without an ounce of embarrassment. His eyes were steady, and he held her gaze for a few moments after that before he turned back to his paperwork.
“So hell no I'm not going to stop and leave you in the dark,” he said simply as he flipped a page and checked the next report.
Wed Jan 10, 2018 1:33 am by Tsubine
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